Well, Rita came through. For a time, it looked like it was going to hit home here in Houston. We were lucky and dodged the bullet. Folks in East Texas and Southwest Louisiana ... not so lucky. Yes, I evacuated. Didn't want to take any chances. However...

For those of you that have been following, we released a new version of KatrinaSafe on Friday. We accomplished quite a bit on the web site from an architectural perspective that involved a great deal of refactoring, but little new functionality. The Smart...

If you are going to the PDC, there will be a Birds of a Feather session that will talk about how technology can be used to respond to a disaster like Katrina. It's called "Katrina Relief through technology" and will be on Monday, September 12 at 7:00...

It's an exciting time here right now. We just ran our preliminary matching code and found that we have 9 nearly perfect matches ... First Name, Last Name, and DOB. That's 9 folks found that were lost. I'm sorry ... but I'm about to cry here. This...

Another day here in Austin with a lot of progress on KatrinaSafe.com. Right now, I'm waiting on test to approve the next push of the Smart Client application. We've added the functionality to allow case workers to match evacuees with the inquiries .....

It's another early night here in the Austin MTC. We got out at 1 AM last night ... tonight we should be out of here by midnight, I think. Development's been shut down since 9:30 so that everyone can take a break. It's been a very busy day. What we...

Yet another busy day here at KatrinaSafe Central. We had a bug bash on the Smart Client this morning before deployment and are fixing the last couple of isses with one of the web services. We're also busy adding more functionality into the smart client...

Well, we're close to calling it a night here at the Austin MTC. Everyone is tired and honestly, some nerves are beginning to wear thin. That happens when you have a bunch of type A personalities in a high stress situation crowded into a small room all...

We were here until 4 AM last night and I got back in at about 10 AM this morning. We've done triage on what we need to do for the SmartClient and we're getting stuff done. Everything is going well, if a bit hectic. I also just found out that we'll be...

It's now 3:00 AM on Monday morning. We've been here since around 9:30 AM yesterday morning. We just did another push to production on the web site. We had some challenges ... and, this time, we actually recorded it for posterity. However, at 3 AM in the...

We're still going strong -- though most of us are a little on the brain fried side. We're getting ready for our second push into production and a break for dinner (the project lead is absolutely insisting that we break ... which is probably a good thing...

We finally got the production roll for KatrinaSafe done at about 3:30 AM last night. Got in here to the Austin MTC as around 10 AM ... only to find that we missed some issues with the site. That'll happen when you've been coding into the wee hours of...

Every once in a while, I'm reminded what a great company Microsoft is ... and what great people I work with. This is one of those times. I'm in Austin right now and we're going live with www.katrinasafe.com right now. This is a web site that will help...